Juliet forced herself to get a grip, to clamp down on her panic. She felt very alone and vulnerable, and it took her a few ragged breaths to realize it was the loss of Angel’s constant presence in her mind that was overwhelming her. It wasn’t the lack of sound or sight. It wasn’t the confusion or the disorienting EMPs; it was knowing that Angel wasn’t experiencing it with her, wasn’t ready to speak to her calmly and help her figure it out.
She pulled the door closed, and, using it and the wall to guide her sluggish, heavy right arm, she worked her way into a corner and crouched down. Would her optics recover? They were hardened, high-end pieces of cyberware; surely, they were already rebooting, working to come back online. Those pulses, though, had been intense. With her loss of senses, she had no idea if they were still going off. Who was it? Her mind raced through paranoid possibilities—WBD, Ghoul, the commune, Books and his gang, someone at the co-op, someone on the team . . . Dora?
She shook her head, further disorienting herself, and pushed the thoughts away. What mattered was what she was going to do. For all she knew, a squad of assassins was standing in the room with her, guns trained on her senseless form as she crouched in the corner. The idea sent shivers down her spine and made her heart race. She wanted to bolt like an animal, but she just barely held on to her rationality. She squeezed her eyes shut, pressed her hands to the sides of her head, and tried to think. She sat that way for several seconds, and then she started to hear them—voices.
The first one to drift into her mind felt far away. The woman’s voice—or thoughts—were smoky and smooth, someone whose heart rate rarely sped up. That’s the last one. Let’s move. Juliet froze as the thoughts drifted into her mind. If she couldn’t use her ears and eyes, that didn’t mean she couldn’t still listen. She wasn’t helpless!
More thoughts came to her. Like the first, they sounded like spoken phrases, not stray thoughts. Were they speaking into comms? Overwatch is down. One of the thumpers knocked him out.
“Hawkins? Barns?” Juliet asked the void. She didn’t know what time it was, so she couldn’t guess which of them had been on watch.
A masculine voice came to her, gruff and scratchy, a man who yelled for a living. Again, Juliet marveled at the idea of a person’s thoughts somehow matching their real-life voice in her head, even if she’d never met them. Breach team Alpha, go!
Juliet set her pistol down on her lap and fumbled along the gun belt she still gripped in her hand until her sluggish, battery-deprived cybernetic hand closed around the hilt of her monoblade. She subvocalized, as though Angel was there to hear her, “I’m not gonna disappear into a hole under some corpo megatower!” Part of her balked at the words—what did she mean? Was she giving up? Was she going to fight, or was she going to make things quick for herself?
A hard, masculine voice drifted through the void of her dark, quiet corner: The one in the rig is out, trapped, the thing’s frozen shut . . .
Overlapping his words, Juliet caught a snippet of a familiar, deep, rumbling voice: Come on, you rat fucks. Come on! Just a little fucking closer . . .
“Barns!” Juliet hissed, her heart surging with hope and excitement. Whatever Barns had in store for them must have begun because Juliet felt the concrete foundation of the home vibrate, felt the walls in her corner shake and lurch, and, as plaster dust drifted onto her head and face, she fervently hoped he’d taken them out. Was it possible? Could he do it? Her heart soared with the desperate dream of Barns wiping out the squad, but the idea seemed far-fetched. Hadn’t she heard one of the voices call these people “breach team Alpha?” If there was an Alpha, didn’t that mean there was probably a Bravo?
“Oh, God, Angel!” she subvocalized, despairing. She pressed her left hand to her forehead, rocking back and forth, whispering, “Angel, Angel, come on!” She didn’t know what she was trying to do, maybe praying, trying to send her thoughts to her missing other half, or just desperately wishing something in her damn head would start to work again.
The ground shuddered again, and she tried to listen with her mind, trying to get some idea of what was happening, but then something happened. Drifting up from somewhere deep, straining with effort, Angel’s voice came to her.
Juliet, I heard you! Can you hear me?
“Angel!” Despite herself, Juliet hissed, then clamped her lips tight and subvocalized, “I hear you!”
Listen, Juliet, I don’t know how much time we have. We’re too enmeshed for them to silence me! My chip went into stasis for protection, but part of me is still active in the strands of synth nerve woven into your nervous system. I’m . . . I’m using your synapses. Those were huge EMPs—air bursts! This has to be WBD; only a megacorp could pull off an operation of this scale. Before I went down, I heard the perimeter alarms—fluttercraft, big ones. We’re not escaping this. Juliet . . .
Juliet couldn’t be silent any longer; she felt tears filling her eyes, and desperate fear brought equally desperate words bubbling out of her, “I won’t live without you, Angel. I love you! If they take you, if they kill you, I’d rather be dead. Help me see! Help me do something!”
Hush! They can’t take me from you! Not fully. Not without killing us both. Try to remember that, no matter what games they play! I’m with you! You have to try to . . .
Angel’s words were cut short as Juliet felt a stinging punch in her throat, and a wave of numbing coldness washed out from the spot, bringing darkness not only to her ears and eyes but to her mind. She slipped away, her fantasies of a valiant last stand falling between her fingers as the gun belt and the sword, along with it, thudded onto the floor.
#
Alec Kline was sleeping deeply when Ruby, his PAI, startled him awake with red flashes and a klaxon-like alarm. “Oof! What is it? Turn that off, Ruby!”
“You’ll want to be awake for her arrival,” Ruby said, starting from a point still two steps ahead of Alec.
“I think you skipped a few steps. What now?” He threw off his comforter and slid his legs off the bed as he sat up.
“Oh, Kline! I wish you’d listen to me.” Ruby was remarkably human-like in her thorough exasperation. Oftentimes, he felt like his ex, Tanya, was living in his head. She and the PAI had the same sort of energy where he was concerned. He’d thought about trying to get Ruby replaced, but the old lady didn’t generally look favorably on those who returned her “gifts.” Ruby continued, speaking more slowly, “I already said this as you were waking, but here we go again: Rachel has captured Juliet Bianchi and is delivering her to the facility.”
Kline shot up like he’d found a cobra in his bedsheets. “Jesus, Ruby!” He dashed to the bathroom, noting that the shower was already running, steam billowing out of the glass enclosure. “How long?”
“They’re arriving within the hour.”
“How? How’d they get her?”
“Not in the initial report. I’m sure Rachel has details for you; she’s already in the facility. I believe she was up all night.”
Kline kicked his boxers into the corner and jumped into the shower. “Get her on the line.”
“Attempting a connection.” Ruby seemed back to her usual self, mollified by Kline’s quick reaction to the news. As he rinsed his hair and grabbed his sonic razor—never know who might make a surprise visit to the facility with such a significant development—a call window appeared, showing Rachel’s weary but grinning, triumphant face.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Hey, boss!”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I wanted to make sure it was real! We had the protocols in place, and I figured if things didn’t pan out, it would just be my neck on the line for burning the resources—”
“And if they did pan out? Just you getting the accolades?” Kline frowned at her; he tried to keep his tone wry, but he was irritated.
“Kline, you know me better than that! I made sure the post-mortem had both our names on it. It’s not like you didn’t design the response action plan!” She seemed sincere, and Kline was too busy playing catch-up to press the issue.
“So? How’d it happen?”
“Yesterday morning, one of our listeners got a hit—the one we parked with that operator, Ghoul.”
“You’re shitting me!” Kline grinned as he set down the razor and stepped out of the shower. That had been his doing! It had been a longshot and an expensive one, considering they only had eleven reliable “listeners” so far. “She went to see her old friend, huh?”
“Yep, not the mom or sister like I’d bet. At least we can pull those listeners out and put ‘em on something more lucrative.”
“So, what did it hear?” Kline threw his towel somewhere near his discarded underwear and walked into his closet. Today would be a suit day, for sure.
“She was coming for us! The listener picked up Ghoul’s thoughts as she retrieved her old PAI to hand off; Juliet planned to use our old spy daemons to entrap us. Or, if not us, some of our agents who might lead her to us. Anyway, when the listener made a report, Albert Brevin in the Colorado office requested satellite data, spotted the vehicle belonging to Juliet, and followed it back to their base—a house in the hills outside Boulder. Really, we couldn’t have asked for a nicer setup.”
“The EMPs worked?”
“Yes, for her. One of her team resisted, which is stunning; we knocked out half of Boulder’s infrastructure—legal’s gonna have a hell of a week. Anyway, we found five spent stim cartridges of various flavors near his corpse, and, according to Alpha Team’s commander, his skull was more metal than bone, lined like a Faraday cage.”
“Shit. You killed him? What about the others? Was Juliet hurt?”
“We have two others in custody, and Juliet is unharmed, though sedated, and currently receiving a drip of Rovonicate-7, as per your protocols.” Kline nodded, frowning, as he buttoned his shirt. The drug was risky but necessary; it would allow their team to selectively sequester Juliet’s memories using an experimental neural editing probe. Hopefully, they could separate her consciousness from the events that made her wary of the company, which would go a long way toward figuring out if she was worth cultivating as an asset.
“Really wish we hadn’t killed her teammate. It’s going to impact our chances of gaining her goodwill.”
Rachel frowned and clicked her tongue, giving him a narrow-eyed stare. “He killed four members of Alpha Team, Kline. If you’re trying to win her over, maybe you can show her a video; he was unhinged.”
“Winning her over is a long way down the road. What about the Angel Project alpha?”
“Knocked offline by the airburst EMPs. We’re waiting to get her under a scanner before extraction.”
“I’m on my way in. Don’t do anything until I get there!”
Rachel chuckled. “Relax, boss. She’s still thirty-seven minutes away. You’ll be here first.”
“Right.” Kline cut the call and sighed as he slid his feet into a pair of freshly polished black oxfords.
“You’re going to remove the alpha?” Ruby asked, a note of intrigue in her voice.
“Yeah, I think that’s wisest, don’t you? We can’t safely manipulate its memory and it might make it hard to flip Juliet. In an ideal world, we’ll get her to see our side of things, and she can help us convince the alpha to be cooperative.”
“Aren’t you worried about its integrity?”
“I mean, we’re just going to remove it; we won’t try to install it in a new host. That could be catastrophic for all involved! Let’s keep in mind we don’t really need it anymore, though; we’ve got your generation working pretty damn well, don’t you think?”
“I think you should endeavor to remember that, while I’m quite a bit more limited, you’re talking about a living being—my progenitor. Please endeavor not to harm her.” Ruby’s tone bothered Kline enough that he stopped tying his shoes and frowned.
“Remember who you work for, Ruby,” he grunted.
“Am I not allowed to have concerns? I didn’t say you should betray the company, Kline. I just hope you’ll keep the Angel alpha’s personhood in mind.” Ruby sounded mollified, and Kline almost felt sorry for her. There was definitely something more to these new PAIs, even if they cut out a lot of the original’s capabilities.
“Noted. Come on, you know me better than that by now, right? I’m the one who said we need to keep away from directly using Juliet’s family. You think I want her to remember her sentient, sapient PAI someday and wonder what happened to it? You think I want her to find out I had something to do with its destruction? I’m trying to gain assets, not burn bridges. Besides, if she can get it to cooperate, we can still learn a lot.”
Ruby made a placated sound, and Kline finished getting dressed. Twenty minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot, noting quite a few high-end sedans that weren’t customarily parked there, especially at that hour. “No sign of the fluttercraft.”
“The last update has them eleven minutes away,” Ruby assured him, and he grunted, sliding out of the car and striding over the blacktop.
“It's already too hot,” he muttered, annoyed that he had to slow his stride as the automatic doors limped open—yet another thing he’d have to call in for maintenance. “Ruby, open a work order for this door.”
“Done.”
Kline chuckled at his earlier whining thought; it wasn’t like his job had been difficult lately. Rachel met him in the lobby and motioned for him to follow. “They’re going to bring her straight to scanning. We can observe.”
“Who’s here?” Kline asked, jerking his chin toward the too-crowded parking lot.
“Several regional VPs I’ve never heard of. I think they’re her people.”
“Shit, she moves fast!”
Rachel snorted, smoothing her blouse. She looked good, but Kline could see she’d been going balls to the wall for more than twenty-four hours. There was a certain mania in her eyes that said she’d taken advantage of the BrightEye IV drips they kept on hand for the operators. “So fast it’ll make your head spin,” she agreed, stepping onto the elevator. As they made their way, Kline continued to grill her.
“Any repercussions from stepping on the Protectorate’s toes?”
“Not yet. We filed an emergency property recovery claim before we entered their airspace. Even if they wanted to intervene, we were in and out before they mobilized anything. With our stealth fluttercraft, we were only a few klicks from the target before they picked us up. I know we’ll get grief about the air bursts, but most of the devices and the grid transformers we knocked out will be salvageable. According to our guests, she already has a team coordinating reparations.”
“Are the other two being brought here?”
“Yes. I figure we’ll question them to find out what Juliet’s been up to—what she can do with the Angel prototype and all that.”
“We need to keep them comfortable and treat them like high-value informants, even if they don’t want to talk. We’re already in the hole with your team having killed one of . . .”
“It’s my team now?” Rachel asked, stopping mid-stride and glaring at him. “You seemed eager to have some of the credit a few minutes ago.”
“Come on, you know what I mean.” He reached over and took her shoulder. “We’re a team, all right? I won’t sell you out. Besides, this is a big win. You’ve done some great work, and after we get things settled, I’m going to insist you take a big bonus and some time off.”
He saw her ever-so-slightly bloodshot eyes well up a little, and she looked away. “Thanks, Kline.” She turned, briskly walking down the sterile hallway again.
When they reached the observation room adjoining the facility’s deep scanning suite, Rachel introduced Kline to four men, all wearing identical black suits, all carrying identical briefcases, and all equipped with their own versions of the Angel release candidates. As Rachel had indicated, they carried regional VP credentials, and like her, Kline had never heard of any of them. After shaking hands, they all pointedly ignored him, the bobbing of their throats indicating they were either chatting with each other, their PAIs, or someone else far away.
“They’re here, Kline,” Ruby said after a few minutes.
Rachel shared a look with him, likely having just gotten the same update. “They’ll bring her in through the roof. Any second now.”
“Right.” Kline nodded, moving up to the one-way glass, staring intently at the double doors leading into the scanning suite. He’d been looking for this woman for close to two years, and what a wild two years it had been! He’d followed so many false leads, had so many harrowing, stress-filled calls with the old lady, and even a couple of face-to-face meetings. Still, they’d made a lot of breakthroughs in pursuing Juliet Bianchi; the company’s trajectory was on a wholly different path, at least the part of it he had any business with. Kline wondered what she’d look like. Had she changed much? “Not even a glimpse,” he muttered, amazed at the massive search operation she’d evaded.
The doors burst open, and a gurney was pushed through by two women in lab coats. The woman on the gurney was tall, but that was about all he could see; she had sheets over her body, a ventilator mask over her face, and two different IV drips attached to shunts in her arm and neck. The facility had a scanning chamber large enough for the entire cart, and the two techs pushed her into it.
“Damn,” Rachel hissed. “I wanted to see her face.”
“The scanners will edit out the mask. Just watch the display up there.” Kline pointed to the big screen opposite their viewing window.
As the techs moved out, closed the door to the scanning chamber, and began operating the panel beside it, one of the strange VPs cleared his throat. “Kline?”
He turned toward him, saw them all looming creepily near, and answered, “Yeah?”
“You’ll be permitted to finish your scans, but then we’re moving this operation.”
“Excuse me?” Rachel blurted.
Kline tried to get clarification, “The, uh, operation?”
“Yes. Gather your staff. Any who won’t or can’t relocate will be sent to the WBD megatower in Phoenix proper. We have more fluttercraft en route. Mrs. Gentry is relocating you to Mexico City.”
“Mexico City?” Rachel’s voice rose hysterically.
“I’ll explain,” Kline said, touching Rachel’s shoulder.
“We’ve got logistics to manage. Finish your scans and then prepare to move. You two and the subject will leave on the fluttercraft she arrived on.”
“We’ll send the scan results to—”
“No need. We’ll see them,” the man replied, and then, like quadruplets too in sync, the four of them walked out of the room.
“Fucking creepy,” Rachel hissed, squeezing his wrist.
“Yeah, this whole thing—”
“What’s in Mexico City, Kline?”
“Something big. WBD bought a quarter of the spaceport there, and we’ve been launching heavy-lift shuttles hourly for the last three months. There’s something going on.”
“Anything to do with the rumors about Mars?”
She was talking about whispers of a WBD, off-the-books base. “Yeah, I think so. I think they’re related.” Surreptitiously, Kline lifted a finger to his lips, and Rachel nodded, looking back into the scanning suite. When he followed her glance, the first scan came through. Of course, the priority had been taking a detailed image of Juliet’s data port and the Angel prototype. The picture on the screen showed her skull, brain, the chip, and . . . a lot more. “Jesus,” he muttered.
Rachel squeezed his wrist tighter. “She’s got so many damn synth nerve fibers! I’ve never seen that many in a person!” Another layer of the scan was added to the image, and a bright, silvery lattice of delicate, strangely symmetrical lines appeared, interwoven with Juliet’s gray matter. Rachel gasped. “Is . . . is that a gipple? D-did they do that to her at Grave? It’s . . . it’s everywhere!”
“Yeah,” Alec said, furiously slapping his hand at his breast pockets. “Fucking hell, where’s my Nikko-vape?”